Meeting Joe Johnson

This post was inspired by seeing a photo of Joe Johnson, that I'd never seen before, in a Facebook group a few days ago.  It's the photo you see at 3:58 in this clip.  I saw that, and I realized I forgot just how high Joe Johnson could air.  When I saw that photo, and the string of comments, I thought to the time I first met Joe, and I knew I had to write a blog post about what I remember of  him and his riding.  So here it is.  When I went looking on YouTube for footage of him, I first found this clip above, which I'd never seen before, and then realized this was part of a documentary video on the New England scene.  So I watched the whole thing.  A Wicked Ride is long (1:44:00), but it's a great video of a scene that I knew little about, even though I knew some of the people in it fairly well.

Like many firsts in my BMX freestyle life, this story starts with the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters contest in April of 1986.  I moved to San Jose from Boise, Idaho the previous September, following my family there, a year after graduating high school.  I started a freestyle zine, called San Jose Stylin', as an excuse to meet the great riders of the San Francisco Bay area.  It was the most cohesive scene in the world at the time, where everyone from the region got together every Sunday at Golden Gate Park in The City.  My zine, covering the scene, which contained interviews with Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, and Hugo Gonzales, caught the eye of Andy and Lew at FREESTYLIN' magazine.  I sent each of them a copy every issue, along with the BMX Plus editors.  At the first contest of 1986, at the Velodrome in SoCal, I went up and introduced myself to Andy, who introduced me to Lew.  I was floored when they said they really liked my zine.  I mean, I was a kid from fucking Idaho, I still read every single word, including the ads, of every issue of FREESTYLIN'.  Suddenly I was talking to the editors and hearing their stoke on my zine.  Serious fanboy moment.

A few weeks later, I got a call out of the blue.  Andy Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN', was on the phone.  He asked if I planned on going to the next AFA Masters contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I had saved up my Pizza Hut earnings for a plane ticket, and was going to go there and compete.  Glad to hear that, he asked if I wanted to write the contest article for FREESTYLIN'.  I can't remember how long it took to pick my jaw up off the floor, but I muttered "Yeah," and we went over the details.  Windy, the Wizard Pubs photographer, was going to shoot the photos, but they needed someone to write the article.  Somehow, thanks to the zine I typed on a 1920's era, manual, Royal typewriter, I would write the article.

I was 19 at the time, it was the first time I flew to a place where no one was there to pick me up. I couldn't rent a car, and I didn't bother to figure out exactly where the contest was being held.  I packed my suitcase, putting my wheels in it, and put the rest of my bike in an odd sized box and called it "camping equipment," a trick Robert Peterson taught me to avoid the $40 bike shipping fee airlines charged at the time.  You could do things like that then.  My parents dropped me off at the San Jose airport, and I flew to Tulsa, via Dallas.  In the DFW airport, I ran into GT pros, Eddie Fiola, who I'd met before, Martin Aparijo, and some blond kid I didn't recognize.  Eddie, after I introduced myself at the gate, introduced me to Martin, and then said, "This is our new guy, Josh White, he just did this crazy photo shoot for FREESTYLIN'."  We were all on the same flight into Tulsa, and I asked if there was a chance to catch a ride to the contest site with them.  They had a small rental car, three guys, gear, and bike boxes, so there just wasn't room. No problem, I thought, I'll just hang in the luggage area, there will be a ton of riders flying in, it's freakin' Tulsa, after all, nobody lived close by.  I'd just catch a ride with some other riders.

I sat, alone, in the baggage area, for about an hour after my flight, and didn't see anyone with a bike box.  I was in a strange town, on my own, not enough money for a taxi, too young to get a rental car, and I had no idea where the contest was actually being held.  I was starting to get worried.

Finally, I saw some dark haired kid dragging a bike box off the conveyor belt.  He was a really average looking kid, straight dark hair, very normal haircut, jeans and a T-shirt.  He was also alone.  I had my stuff on a luggage cart, and I headed over and said, "Hi," to him.  I followed him as he got a luggage cart and loaded his stuff on it.  He said his name was Joe Johnson, that he rode for Haro, and was from New England.  I told him I was writing the magazine article for FREESTYLIN'.  We both probably thought the other was lying, but didn't say so.  I was thinking, "You ride for Haro?  OK, co-sponsor kid from the East Coast, that's cool."  Just two random BMX freestylers meeting in an airport, and connecting because we were freestylers.

Joe said he had a ride coming, and I could probably bum a ride to the hotel, and then to the contest site.  I said, "Cool."  We both were pretty quiet, and talked on and off, and did infinity rolls and any other trick we could think of on our luggage carts for 45 minutes or so.

Suddenly I looked up, and a van pulled up.  The Haro tour van.  WTF?  My jaw dropped again, and stayed on the ground, as legendary Haro pro Ron Wilkerson got out of the driver's side and yelled, "Hey Joe, what's up?"  Or something like that.  I was lost in another fanboy moment.  There were about 8 people and bikes crammed in the van already, but they offered me a ride, I jammed my bike box and luggage in the back, and sat on a bunch of bike top tubes, my feet hanging over all the handlebars, all the way to the hotel.

It was a Holiday Inn Holidome, with a swimming pool, miniature golf holes, a pool table, and a bunch of couches and chairs under roof, with a wall of windows on one end.  Everywhere I looked there were pro or top amateur riders.  Joe told them I was writing the contest article for FREESTYLIN', and that became my intro.  Jon Peterson, the Haro assistant team manager, took me under his wing, told me I could crash on the floor of their second room, along with Joe, Dennis McCoy, Rick Moliterno, and manager Billy Hop, as I recall.  I literally felt like I'd won some kind of BMX freestyle lottery.  Not only had I lucked into a ride to the hotel, I was staying with the Haro team.

Only 8 months before, I was a kid in Idaho, riding with my trick teammate Jay Bickel, an SE co-sponsored rider.  My biggest dream at that point was that, maybe, someday, I could tag along on a magazine photo shoot to watch.  Suddenly I was hanging in the hotel with freestyle royalty, and playing pool with Woody Itson.  I hung with the Haro team all weekend, and I learned that those two new kids I met, Josh White and Joe Johnson, both fucking ripped.  They were both exploding onto the national freestyle scene that weekend.  There was another kid I met there, nobody caught his name over the weekend.  We all referred to him as "The Storm Trooper" because he wore a full face helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and shoulder pads to ride vert.  That was at a time where most pros wore only an open face helmet and leathers to ride.  Windy got a couple really good photos of that kid, and Andy Jenkins called me up a week later to find out if I knew his name.  I called around, and learned that kid's name was Mathew Hoffman.  The weird thing is, although I actually shot photos from the deck of the Haro quarterpipe in practice, and watched all weekend, I don't remember any riding really.  So much other stuff happened, I blanked out on the riding since.  I guess I was just overwhelmed with being in the middle of the guys I'd been reading about in the magazines for a couple of years.

In a really cool coincidence, my article from the contest, an articlearticle about zines,  listing my zine first in the country, and Josh White's epic first photo shoot, all came out in the August '86 issue of FREESTYLIN'.  For you old schoolers, that's the one with the white cover and the little tiny photo on it... of Josh White.  You can check out a scan of that magazine here.  In that first magazine article I ever wrote, is this passage about the 16Expert ramp class:

"In (16 X Ramps) White didn't quite pull the air he did in practice, but he edged out the ever incredible Tony Murray- anyway- that may give you a clue to where this guy's headed.  Tony's new Haro teammate, Joe Johnson, took third.  If his name doesn't ring a bell, give it time.  Executing prime lookbacks, can-can lookbacks, and NO HANDERS five feet out, Joe is a force to be reckoned with."

I'm not sure what a "prime" lookback is, I think I was just trying to use unusual adjectives in the article.  Reading that article again, for the first time in probably 30 years, reminded me of another thing about freestyle ramps in the 1980's.  Every ramp rider had a home ramp they rode, ranging from the early six foot high, Bob Haro era quarterpipes, to 8 and 9 foot ramps.  Generally, no bike ramps had vert then, but some had a few inches of it.  Transitions had yet to be standardized, and ranged from round to very elliptical.

My first and only driveway quarterpipe, for example, was bought for $25 from skaters.  It it went up to vert in five feet of height, but that transition only spanned three feet from bottom of the ramp to where it hit vert, going forward, it was a complete ellipse, with a gap in plywood and then a foot of vert.  That's an extreme example, but homemade ramps ranged from my beast to the GT tour ramp, which was nine feet high and smooth, but only five feet wide.

My point here is that every rider was used to their own ramp, it's particular transition, how high it was, how much flex it had, how much it moved, where the soft spot in the tranny was from those two curved 2 X 4's, and every other nuance.  Then riders went to a contest, and had to get used to a totally different ramp.  So pretty much every ramp rider could get two or three feet higher on their own ramp, then they did at contests.  The best ramp riding was never at contests in the early years.  So when I wrote in the article that Joe was doing variations five feet out, as an amateur, that was amazing for its day.  Most of the ams who could do 6 to 8 foot airs at home, maybe did high airs of 4 or 5 feet at a contest.  Though it doesn't sound that impressive now, Joe doing the hardest variations of the day, head high, at a contest, really set him apart. 

That August issue of FREESTYLIN' hit the newsstands in late June '86, and on August 1st, I started my new job at Wizard Publications.  I was suddenly in the industry, and Josh, Joe, and Mat became this amazing new wave of vert riders who seemingly popped out of nowhere, from random parts of the country not known for great riders, and made the pros nervous with their skills.  I got to know them all a bit, and watched as Josh went pro, and Mat and Joe ruled the amateur class for another couple of years.

The other thing I remember about Joe was that he did the best version of several variations, including the pros.  His no footed can-cans and one handed no footed can-cans, were better looking in photos, and more consistent in real life, than anyone else.  

Like everyone else in BMX freestyle, I watched these new vert guys blast the eight foot quarterpipes at the AFA Masters contests.  Then Ron Wilkerson started up the 2-Hip halfpipe contests, in 1987, because that's where vert riding was headed.  Joe, Mat, and Josh, all brought up on quarterpipes, really adapted well to the halfpipes, and I think that's where Joe, especially, was really able to show his stuff and set himself apart even more.

The ramps got bigger, I think the traveling 2-Hip halfpipe in 1987 and beyond was 9 or 9 1/2 feet high, with a touch of vert.  But it always seemed to get set up with one side slightly over-vert, and one side slightly under.  For that reason, nearly every rider, amateurs and pros, had one side they favored, and they did all their variations on that side.  So in 1987-88-89, contest runs were: pump air, variation, pump air, variation, pump air, variation.  And if a rider landed low on a single air, BAM, momentum gone, and three or four airs were needed to get back up to height.  One of our Unreel cameramen, at the big 2-Hip finals comp in Irvine, CA in 1988, asked Dave Voelker, an amazing quarterpipe rider, about the halfpipe.  I loved his answer, "You have to be able to land on these things.  I never really had to do that before."  

Joe Johnson was the first rider I remember who consistently did back to back to back variations, at height.  In those days, "height" meant 5 to 6 feet out, usually.  But it made a huge difference in his runs.  Even the pros didn't do as many hard variations back to back then.

In the clip from A Wicked Ride, above, he and Windy Osborn both mention the photo shoot at his house.  That happened during my short stint at working at Wizard Publications.  I know this because I remember Windy talking about how insanely high his airs were at that shoot.  I also remember because she hand printed the black and white 8 X 10 photos in her darkroom, like always.  The favorite ones got picked to be in the magazine, and went with the artwork to the printer.  All the other B&W 8 X 10's became fair game for Andy, Lew, Gork, and me to snag and tack up on our office walls.

At the very end of the clip, you see the black and white photo of Joe doing a front foot rocket air, called a Neil Armstrong, with both feet on the front pegs, which was, and still is, freakin' impossible in my book.  The photo is phenomenal.  I love that photo.  I don't think it got shown in the first article about Joe, because I had that original, Windy Osborn shot and printed, 8 X 10 on my office wall.  Really.

Even crazier, years later, when Wizard Publications was closing down, I was roommates with Chris Moeller of S&M bikes fame, who had been a test rider and contributing writer at Wizard.  He got the call that they were cleaning out the building, and Moeller and I went down and dug through the "trash."  That included HUNDREDS of 8 X 10 photos.  This huge box of them had been thrown in the dumpster.  I wanted to keep all of them, being the only guy thinking about the distant future then.  But Chris, Bill Grad, and me shared a tiny, 1 bedroom apartment.  Chris had the bedroom, I had the living room floor, and bill had the 2 cushion couch.  We just didn't have room to save the Wizard photos.  God's gonna pimp slap me for that one in the afterlife, I know.  So Chris and I went through them, and picked a few each to keep.  One of the three or four I kept was that shot of Joe doing the Neil Armstrong that had been on my office wall.  You know how I talk about losing all my videos and stuff when I moved to NC in 2008?  That photo was in the storage unit I lost.  Damn.

I went on to work at the AFA, and then Unreel Productions.  As a rider, I started doing tailwhip footplants on street, real slow and clunky, but original for the time.  Joe, meanwhile, invented the tailwhip air.  I became convinced that they could be done on a jump, and started trying them.  My problem was, I didn't get much air and sucked at jumping. I just didn't get high enough to get the bike all the way around and land them.  I also convinced myself that bunnyhop tailwhips were possible, and I began trying them in 1987.  At that time, telling people I was trying bunnyhop tailwhips would be like a rider today saying, "I'm working on bunnyhop double backflips."  It was so impossible, it became a joke.  Nobody thought that trick would ever happen.

Meanwhile, Joe Johnson, who actually had amazing riding skills, got single tailwhips on vert wired, and the started doing one handed ones.  While most of the 1988 vert riders hucked 900 attempts, Joe worked out the double tailwhip.  Like you see in the clip above, Joe landed the first double tailwhip, on vert, at the 2-Hip King of Vert in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.  I hate to admit it, but I totally forgot that was the first double tailwhip he landed.  I forgot, because  a bit later that afternoon, Mat Hoffman landed the first 900 in a contest... and that overshadowed everything else from that contest.  What makes forgetting Joe's first double tailwhip even worse is that I was there... on the deck of the ramp... with a fucking $50,000 professional betacam camera.  Yeah, really... here's my footage of Joe's first double whip, at 11:31.



Somehow I forgot I happened to shoot that epic trick the first time he landed it.  Sorry Joe.  That 900 Mat landed at 14:43 in this clip above dulled my memory of the rest of the weekend. 

I do remember, though, being at Woodward in Pennsylvania for the 2-Hip King of Vert there a couple of months later.  Again, I was the Unreel Productions cameraman, sent there because Vision sponsored the 2-Hip contest series.  At :38 in the top clip, you can see Joe huck the first attempt at a triple tailwhip.  It was the spring of 1989.  My footage from that contest was edited into the Ride Like a Man video by Eddie Roman.  The triple tailwhip try isn't in the video.  I do remember that I got to State College, PA for that college, and found that the airline had lost the batteries and videotape for my camera.  I got them at the last moment, and I think a battery went dead or something.

Luckily, in this here internet era with YouTube and all, I found this clip, with just Joe's runs from Woodward.  You can really get a sense of how freakin' high Joe was getting really well from this  angle.  If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know that the stories of the old freestyle days I tell are my memories of these events, usually stoked back into my head by watching video of the events if possible.  I'm not telling all of you the unbiased, official, historical account of these events.  And like I've said many, many times, I was an industry guy with a weird string of jobs.  Because of that, I wound up standing nearby when some amazing stuff went down.  I mean that absolutely literally.  At 3:49 in this clip, Joe flies out to catch his breath and stoke up the crowd.  You'll see a guy on the deck, just to the right of Joe, in a Vision Street Wear T-shirt and lavender shorts (they were free from Vision).  That's me.  Standing nearby as the crowd chants for Joe to try a triple tailwhip.  Then Joe rolls in, and four walls later, tries a triple tailwhip for the first time in human history.  We went berzerk.  Joe actually came crazy close.  No... wait... he got the bike all the way around on the third whip, and he's from New England.  He came wicked close to pulling the triple tailwhip that day.

On the way out, I was walking with Mike Miranda (Vision BMX team manager) and a couple other guys, including Karl Rothe.  We saw Joe in a car window, and Karl said something like, "Man Joe, you must be sportin' some major wood after almost landing a triple whip."  Then he saw an older woman in the car next to Joe.  I think it was Joe's grandma.  We just started cracking up as we walked off.

That year, 1989, was the year that the mainstream bike industry decided "BMX is dead" and pulled money out to put it into mountain bikes.  Things faded everywhere as top riders lost sponsors.  I don't think I ever ran into Joe after 1989.  He faded away into New England life I guess.  That December, I came agonizingly close to landing a few bunnyhop tailwhips.  But not quite.  I never did land one.  But in 1990, Bill Nitschke, a much, much more talented rider than me, made them real in front of a Burger King.  The Whopper, the kind with all hop and no cheese, was born, sparked, no doubt, by seeing Joe Johnson make the tailwhip and double tailwhip airs a reality.

As time went on, Mat Hoffman took vert to yet another level in the Eddie Roman produced video, Headfirst.  He became the vert rider most people in later years think of when asked about the late 1980's.  But vert would never be what it is now with out the clean cut, quiet, New England guy, Joe Johnson.

I'm going to be sharing my most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...